Courseblog #20 [Sara] Electioneering and the Electorate

Having grown up in a small rural precinct in Indiana, I have learned over the years that I must develop a strategy for approaching my polling place in order to preserve the integrity of my physical person. This may sound like a bit of an overstatement but, in elections past, I have been quite literally swarmed upon opening my car door by candidates and their children and grandchildren all forcing handshakes and buttons and donuts and t-shirts. There was actually a moment in 2008 where I had stern words with a female candidate running for county treasurer who was particularly aggressive, going to such lengths as to insist that if she touched me one more time that I would not only refuse to vote for her, but that I would take the afternoon off and campaign for her opponent.

Don't get me wrong, this polling place campaigning is not strictly something that I oppose--in small local races there might not be another opportunity for the voting public to even meet candidates running for the smaller offices, and I enjoy the sort of festive atmosphere that the local sherriff's shenanigans can add to the experience, I just fear the ambush, the need to be polite, feeling obligated to say kind words or make promises in the heat of a face to face interaction...  and this is exactly why these tactics work. How can you argue with a 6 year old who asks if you're going to vote for her grandma? Forget about it.

For this reason alone, I put off voting this year until mid afternoon, hoping that I might avoid the worst of the candidate  traffic by skirting the before and after work hours. Much to my surprise, I arrived at my destination just after 2:00 pm to find the following scene:

Republicans cook out within the estricted areas for "electioneering" at Brown County Indiana's Hamblen Township Precinct Three Polling Place.

These signs came as a great shock to me, they effectively fenced off the Republicans to the far side of the parking lot where they were grilling burgers and cooking chili but, nevertheless, at a "safe" distance.

Note: I make mention of the Republicans not because it is them that I am particularly wary of, (though one of Richard Mourdock's female relatives was trying to catch my eye while I took this photo and I had to pretend to be looking for something in my purse for several long minutes until she gave up). No, I mention the Republicans only because they were the only ones toughing it out behind this invisible ethics fence, the Democrats having abandoned their post, their shoes, and a half-full Diet Mountain Dew:

Brown County Democrats in Hamblen Towship, District 3 give up their campaign post in light of the new restrictions on "electioneering" OR maybe they were across the way taking advantage of the free GOP chili? Hard to say.

 I found these new rule of particular interest because they seemed, in many ways, to be a bucking of tradition, a fundamental change to the "performance of Election Day" in small rural districts across America. While I was at somewhat greater ease with the knowledge that I would not be physically approached in the parking lot of my polling place, I couldn't help but remark on the irony of this charade of impartiality or fairness or restraint that seemed to be enacted by the signs. According to the signs, electioneering consists of "expressing support or opposition to any candidate, party, or referendum on the ballot" I respect and admire the election board for going to great lengths to try and protect voters from personal persuasion, but I couldn't help but note the irony of the invisible electioneering that prevailed throughout the location. When I was a little girl, I used to accompany my mother to vote at the local community clubhouse, a sort of rec center where our small lake community held Volunteer Firemen's dinners and Bingo on Friday nights, but when I was able to vote in my first election in 2001, it was after the local Non-denominational Christian Church had petitioned to have our polling place moved to their sanctuary, citing the clubhouse with its gravel parking lot for having insufficient accessibility. Now we in Hamblen 3 vote at the Church of the Lakes, and if you have trouble making the trip out, they'll even come pick you up:

Church of the Lakes - 8844 Nineveh Road, Nineveh, Indiana 46164

Don't get me wrong, the church people are great and the facilities are wonderful and accessible and the whole congregation really goes out of its way to welcome the community, but I'm still amused by the blindness to electioneering by another name:

An interesting juxtaposition of signage inside the front door of the Hamblen 3 polling place, Nineveh's Church of the Lakes.

Volunteers check ID and registrations inside Church of the Lakes' "Harvestland Meeting Place," adjacent to the sanctuary.

We are certainly not the only district to vote in a community church, and most don't give it a second thought, regardless of faith. In fact, I had never much remarked on the potential performance of the space in relations to the election until I was encountered with the electioneering sign this year.

Casting my ballot across from the "Jesus and his Felt Friends" bulletin board in Harvestland. Look, ma, I got to Beta-test our precincts only electronic voting machine this year. Voting with paper and pen is for peasants.

I might have written it off altogether as a particular quirk of white Middle America until I returned to Bloomington around 3:00 pm to discover a new public protest at the St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Parish on East Third Street. As I approached the field of 3,315 crosses planted across the church lawn, I thought that the parish might be erecting a Veteran's Day memorial, but I soon discovered it was an anti-abortion display that, according to an article in the Bloomington Herald Times, was erected Saturday, November 3. According to Father Tom Kovatch, the parish priest who was quoted in the article, the church is “not trying to promote a political agenda or tell people who they can or can’t vote for.” Rather, their role, he said, is to “let people see visually how many lives are lost to abortion each day,  and to encourage them to use their conscience and examine what our church teaches so they can vote with an informed conscience” (Herald Times 6 Nov 2012).

According to Bloomington's Herald Times: "An anti-abortion sign and more than 3,000 white crosses outside the St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church are meant to encourage people to consider the number of lives lost to abortion, and urge them to consider church teachings and their conscience when voting for political candidates."

St. Charles's Church is well within their rights as, as far as my research can reveal, they did not serve as a Monroe County polling place on election day, but in other districts across America, similar displays were erected on the grounds of churches that did serve as voting site. One very similar display marked the grounds of a Colorado polling place and, although many reported finding the display offensive and intimidating, because the crosses were more than 100 feet from the door of the building, they were within the bounds of the law as written.

As a theatre and performance scholar I find this attention to the sort of semiotics of voting spaces particularly relevant to the discussion of fair and equitable voting practice. Even in the absence of the personal, aggressive campaigning of candidates at voting sites it is necessary to recognize that there is still a great deal of very rich performance happening in the interaction of citizens with the very structures in which voting takes place. Outside of the religious rhetoric that overwhelmed the campaign at points still rests very powerful and potentially influential--read intimidating--narratives of bias that masquerade as access, compassson, and conscience. One must draw certain inevitable parallels between the intimidation tactics used against women attempting to enter abortion clinics to these alternately aggressive physical and visual appeals to voters outside polling places. At every instance, the goal is to use a sort of mob mise-en-scene steeped in some semblance of universal emotional appeals whether from a candidate's grandaughter or a picture of an aborted fetus.

As an exhibit, I would be interested in tracing the historical use of religious rhetoric by those not directly affiliated with political campaigns and tracking the evolving opinion of these tactics a both ethical and lawful. It is important, I think, not to focus strictly on the blatant intimidation tactics of some horrendous sites of voter suppression, but rather finding a way to render visible the invisible electioneering that is taking place in the spaces of the performance of voting.

But how do you make people see the apparatus? I was talking it over with friends who suggested that these messages might be painted on bodies, literally, to show their effect on the human emotional response. Others who suggested rebuilding the polling places up-side down. We might solicit photographs from private citizens who vote and build a wall collage of the images. My boyfriend suggested offering kits to regional offices and allowing them to build their own ideal place and seeing what they choose. So much of this, though, feels like baiting to me and I fear it would only speak to those who are already listening. Maybe it's the latent historian in me, but I'm more interested in the archive. I'm most curious about the laws, local and national, that dictate what voting places look like and the inevitable lawsuits that accompany them. I'm disappointed in myself, because it sounds dreadfully boring, but I think it is only through reading about the fights already fought that people might look around them and notice the details, for that is really the matter at the heart of it, not that we need to regulate those details but appreciate what is keeping voters away and what is unfairly pushing them while they're there.

[[Edited to add: So, apparently, my photo-taking at Chruch of the Lakes was a cause for concern and the Republican candidates that I was trying to surreptitiously avoid ended up calling my mother to say that they were very alarmed that I was taking so many pictures and wondered if anyone had done anything to offend me, that they were restricted that year because of complaints of harrassment in the past and that they wanted to be sure that no one harrassed me that day. Short answer, no, no one harrassed me while I was at the polling place that day. But someone did call my mom later and she's been harrassing me about it ever since.]]